What a strange, hard week this has been. It feels like it has been hard in every sense of the word — difficult, unyielding. I hope everyone is okay. This is the first of a number of recipes I’ve had saved up for these first few baby-filled months, and, thankfully, it is so very easy. I think “easy” was going to be my mantra in the kitchen for the foreseeable future no matter what, now that we have a little person to cuddle and feed and care for, but right now it feels particularly apt to share something that comes together without much effort, without any stress, to be a treat that soothes and indulges.

Too often I feel like scones get the short end of the stick in the coffee shop scene. Maybe it’s because they sit out behind the glass for a little bit too long by the time that they make it into a wax paper bag, ending up just a little too dry and flavorless, unsatisfyingly crumbly, and thus under-appreciated. I’ll admit that before I tried making them at home, I succumbed to that belief, too, thinking that the way I wanted scones to taste was something that existed only in my mind: little puffy triangles that were craggy on the outside, but tender and moist within, with just the slightest springiness to them to distinguish them from cakes or cookies. But in actuality, I think a homemade scone, fresh and warm from the oven, is just that. Slight crunch on the outside, soft inside, with a subtle resilience to the crumb. And they’re, surprisingly, so very easy to make! We should all have homemade scones in our kitchens. (At least on the weekends.)

I’ve been mostly working from home in these last couple of weeks before the home stretch, but went in to the office last week to wrap up loose ends, take home all the heels that I totally forgot about for the last six months, and to do fun things like meet with my pro bono clients, who got all the adoptive funding we requested! It did mean that that hearing didn’t end up happening, but when it’s because we got everything we asked for, that’s okay with me. To be clear, I think our happy outcome had everything to do with (1) my clients being wonderful parents with the sweetest daughter who really deserved it, (2) the other side really wanting to postpone the hearing, and (3) me really not wanting to postpone the hearing because hey guys, I have a biological baby deadline, and nothing to do with any lawyering I did. But in a job where most of the time I represent (or, help people senior to me help partners senior to them represent) clients in long, drawn-out matters with things at stake that sometimes feel more abstract than real, helping parents get funding for their sunny, sweet nine-year-old, and getting this thank-you card, was about the best cap on starting maternity leave that I could ask for.

So, our freezer is officially ready to burst. I wish I could say that it’s packed to the brim with healthy, ready-to-heat casseroles and nourishing breakfasts that I tucked away for the zombie days ahead, but that’s only about 30% true — maybe more like 0% true depending on how you interpret “healthy” or “nourishing” — and the remainder is more things like baked French toast (coming soon!) and frozen brownies for the nurses (okay, also for me) and that Costco 17-pack of Hot Pockets we gleefully took home last Sunday. But the good news is that we finally bought a new microwave after leaving our old one in New York a few months ago (which made the last gleeful Costco pack of Hot Pockets we bought a little less gleeful when we got home and realized our folly. Twenty-eight minutes in the oven. Twenty-eight. Sometimes more like 40. Also, what made them choose to include 17?) So we are ready to irradiate these meals to our heart’s content.

I think fried rice may have been one of the first things I learned from my mother and grandmother in the kitchen. I imagine it must be like Sunday gravy in that every family has their own little way of doing things, though I don’t know that ours was so much a heirloom recipe as just an easy, quick, and comforting way to get food on the table: for us it always began with eggs and a generous pinch of salt, whisked vigorously with chopsticks and scrambled into small wisps in a screaming-hot wok. These were set aside to make way for diced white onion, sauteed until translucent, green peas, most often straight from a bag in the freezer and thawed in the wok, and some form of cooked, diced meat (usually, in a moment of fusion before fusion’s time, bits of deli sliced honey ham), before it all got stirred up with rice, salt, and pepper, to be kept warm in the wok over low heat, crackling softly, until a crispy crust formed on the bottom and everyone got seconds, thirds, and fourths.

Like a lot of folks, I’m sure, B2 and I began as a fling. We were summer associates (or, baby interns) at our future Manhattan law firms, about to head back to our last year of law school; I was about to spend half of it in Hong Kong, and he was staying in Boston, and we had no idea where we were headed as a couple (and, wait, were we a couple?) But then, sitting on a patio at an Italian restaurant in the East Village on one of our first actual dates, I asked B2 over a plate of squid ink spaghetti where he saw himself in five years. Still in New York, or somewhere else? (I did not win any awards for creative early-dating conversation.) Somewhere closer to home, he told me. Maybe not Hawaii just yet, but California would be nice. Just to be closer to family. I remember this answer so clearly, because I saw myself in California, too; I wanted to be closer to my family, too. It was the first time we talked seriously about the things we cared about, family most of all, and to hear him say that something mattered to him that also mattered so much to me was when our nascent relationship began to feel real. (Also, the thought of eventually moving to Hawaii did not hurt.)

Earlier this summer, I spent a few glorious hours in Venice at The Tasting Kitchen in what felt like an endless parade of dream brunch fare. Before this I’d never had any kind of chef’s menu or omakase-type meal, but a group of us opted for their tasting menu (because that seemed like what you should choose at a restaurant similarly named) and it was a culinary romp that makes me wish I could splurge on that kind of treat all the time: a smorgasbord of baked goods to start, with tender, butter-yellow biscuits, dense and moist breakfast cakes studded with fruit or dark with spices, and sticky pecan buns drenched in syrup; little lox and cucumber sandwiches in crunchy, unabashedly buttered toast; omelettes tucked neatly around tomatoes and creamy avocado; perfect parfaits (redundant?) with sweet sliced plums and berries on top.

In the last week or so, in what seems to be the norm for this time of year, B2 and I have been basking in a much-needed respite from a couple of busy months at work. Mostly this has consisted of me procrastinating all my non-urgent responsibilities by streaming the Olympics for most of the day (while B2, by comparison, texts me at 11am that he has done everything he needed to do and is wondering how “to be more productive”), before zipping home and landing on the couch in comfy clothes while the sun is still high in the sky. We’re spending our long evenings mostly enjoying our quiet, bright apartment, marveling at how it’s possible we can already be in the third trimester, and trying really hard to get B2’s hand on my belly in time to feel B3 bopping around like a caffeinated frog (somehow harder to do than it should be with all of the punch-dancing and caroming back and forth that he’s doing each day).

The very good news is that we’ve officially moved into a place to call our own in LA (hurray!) and the accompanying not-bad news is that, because we got rid of all our furniture in our move last month, we’re very slowly figuring out how to furnish it (adjusting to new and foreign concepts like What Makes Sense or What Looks Nice and not Where Can It Possibly Fit in Our Tiny New York Space) and in the meantime, still eating standing up at the kitchen counter or on our laps. Personally, I’m tempted by an all-abiding impatience to go ahead and just stuff our home with furniture already, but luckily the perpetually calmer B2 is here to keep me in check, and from ending up with a home that manages to be nonfunctional, haphazard, and overpriced all at once. Still, word on the UPS street is that our kitchen table is on the way! So hopefully I’ll be able to start sharing some new eats and snaps from this sunny West Coast home of ours sometime soon.

A few months ago, a couple of friends introduced us to a soba restaurant in Midtown called Soba Totto, and introduced me to a world of wonders. Soba noodles are fast working their way up my list of favorite noodles, with their resilient bite and nutty flavor, and they were never better than in the soups we tried there. I had a duck breast and yuzu soba noodle soup that was all kinds of crisp, smoky and tart in all the right ways, but what really stole my heart was B2’s choice (this happens all the time, because I am that kind of date) — something they called “sukiyaki soba,” soba noodles served in a dark, lip-smacking broth crowded with thinly-sliced pork belly and wiggly tofu, piled high with bias-cut scallions, and, most wonderfully, finished off with a barely-poached egg that melted into the broth to make it extra creamy, rich, and just the slightest bit sweet.